Jon Stewart Quotes

As I sit here today, I can't help but think what an incredible metaphor this room is for the entire process that getting health care and benefits for 9/11 first responders has come to. Behind me, a filled room of 9/11 first responders; and in front of me, a nearly empty Congress. … Your indifference cost these men and women their most valuable commodity -- time! It's the one thing they're running out of. This hearing should be flipped. These men and women should be up on that stage, and Congress should be down here, answering their questions as to why this is so damn hard and takes so damn long.

To have not shot his friend in the face would have sent a message to the quail that America is weak.

You can use your idealism to further your aims, if you realize that nothing is Nirvana, nothing is perfect.

I really thought that the make-up artist for Cinderella Man should have won. I mean, it's so hard to make Russell Crowe look like he got in a fight.

If you don't stick to your values when they're being tested, they're not values: they're hobbies.

And this, this, is their genius. Conservatives are not looking to make education more rigorous and informative, or science more empirical or verifiable, or voting more representative, or the government more efficient or effective. They just want all those things to reinforce their partisan, ideological, conservative viewpoint.

Howard Kurtz: CNN has is broadcasting your show internationally.
Jon Stewart: I am not.
Kurtz: Does that make you legitimate?
Stewart: No, I am illegitimate. I am the bastard son of anything. We're not— we're fake.

By far the most revolutionary aspect of this new position [of the presidency] would be who could hold it. The short answer: just about anyone. By placing no explicit race, gender, or religious requirements on the presidency, the Founders opened the door to a true meritocracy. Why no women, blacks, or non-Christians have answered the founders' challenge is a mystery, though most indications point to some inherent genetic flaw. (William Howard Taft came closest, having what most observers agreed were boobs.)

We look at—the absurdity of the system provides us the most material. And that is best served by sort of the theater of it all, you know, which, by the way, thank you both, because it's been helpful.

We called her Mother Earth. Because she gave birth to us, and then we sucked her dry.

How did Memogate get a "gate"? How did Nipplegate get a "gate"? We invaded a country with the wrong information, and Janet Jackson's tit got a "gate". Who gives out the "gates"? Is there a "Gate"-gate? Is there a, a... I mean, it's absolute... We're living in insanity!

A Trump was a demon who sometimes appeared to us in quasi-human form in order to fire us from jobs we never wanted in the first place.

I don't know what all the controversy is about, quite frankly. I've met Eminem, I met him backstage, and he's really gay.

I have some bad news. Bjork cannot be here tonight. She was trying on her Oscar dress and Dick Cheney shot her.

Stewart: The real issue is that TV news can either bring clarity or noise. And it tends to not seem to know the difference between them. … We do a show that doesn't try to bring noise. I think that we have a more consistent point of view than most news shows, I'll say that.
Bulger: What's that point of view?
Stewart: That theater doesn't make for authentic public discourse.